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THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE 
PRINCIPLES IN KANT 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OP THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS 

AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE 

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(department of philosophy) 



BY 



ELIJAH JORDAN 



CHICAGO 

1912 



Ube TUniversits of Cbfcago 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE 
PRINCIPLES IN KANT 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS 

AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE 

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(department of philosophy) 



BY 

ELIJAH JORDAN 



CHICAGO 

1912 



"»** 

<$?& 



TUv ] 



Composed and Printed By 

The University of Chicago Press 

Chicago, Illinois. U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER AGE 

I. Introduction 5 

II. The Ideality of Time and Space as the Source of the Dis- 
tinction between Constitutive and Regulative Principles . 14 

III. Kant's Conception of Quantity as a Constitutive Principle 19 

IV. Intensive Quantity as a Constitutive Principle .... 29 
V. The Regulative Principles 35 

VI. Conclusion 51 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 

The purpose 1 of this essay is to inquire into Kant's reasons for the 
classification of principles as constitutive and regulative, and to find, 
if possible, how far and in what sense the distinction holds. The method 
employed will appeal to the use of the principles in experience. The 
inquiry will not extend beyond the limits of the application of the 
principles of the understanding, it being assumed that any other use of 
the principles as constitutive or regulative has its basis within those 
limits. 

Kant is asking in what the certainty of knowledge consists. He 
assumes that knowledge, when conceived of as the whole of our recorded 
and present subjective experience, has somewhere a stable point with 
reference to which changes have significance, and from which progress 
takes its direction. This point is called the object, and the certainty of 
knowledge is established when its relation to the object is determined. 
All difficulties which arise in connection with the description of the 
knowledge process are just questions of the nature of this relation; 
and they may all be summed up as the problem of the definition of the 
object. What constitutes the difficulty in the case of any definition of 
the object, is the tendency, on the one hand, to put the definition in 
terms of our particular subjective experiences, and on the other, to have 
left as unaccountable a realistic remainder after the subjective definition 
has been made. 

The first of these tendencies suggests the "construction" of the 
object; the second the discovery of the object indirectly and in a "regu- 
lative" way. Kant's justification of construction claims a basis in the 
fact of the a priori certainty of mathematical knowledge ; and his justi- 
fication of regulation in the fact of the practical certainty of empirical 
knowledge. At the outset he claims that "one part of this knowledge, 
namely, the mathematical, has always been in possession of perfect 
trustworthiness; and thus produces a favorable presumption with 
regard to other parts also, although these may be of a totally different 
nature." 2 It is probable that the other parts here referred to are the 
knowledge of morality, but the real difficulty is whether the presumption 

1 Results are summarized on the last page of the essay. 

a A.,p. 4; B., p. 8. 

5 



6 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

holds favorable with respect to perceptual experience. The purpose 
of this essay may be stated again as an inquiry as to how far this favor- 
able presumption may be said to hold good. 

To examine the process of construction calls for an examination of 
the concept of quantity, and the results obtained here will lead us to 
notice the nature and extent of the application of the regulative prin- 
ciples. When the latter have been established in their logical connec- 
tions, it will be necessary to show their identity with the constitutive 
principles, not, however, through the complicated machinery employed 
by Kant, but through the simple characters of objects in experience. 

Construction is in pure intuition. Many questions arise, however, 
in connection with pure intuition, as e.g., What is pure intuition ? What 
does construction in pure intuition mean? Kant's answer to the first 
of these questions is that pure intuition is space and time, and as such, 
is valid as an object, and is definable as a rule of synthesis in the time 
relations of representations. This answer does not simplify matters, 
for it answers the epistemological question perhaps too hastily, in any 
case, abstractly. The intuitions are now referred to the real in sensation, 
and the question is whether the latter may be constructed quantitatively. 
Looked at more closely, quantity is seen to have connections with all the 
other categories through time. 

For Kant there is a pure consciousness of quantity, or a conscious- 
ness in which no other character is involved; but of quantity in this 
sense there are no axioms, and hence no general certainty. Where 
there are axioms, quantitas becomes quanta and is schematized as num- 
ber. It is the fact that quantitas becomes quanta which brings it into 
relation with the other categories; and if the principles involved here 
are constitutive, they are also regulative. 

At this point Kant abandons quantity for its schema number, which 
again raises the question of the relation of sense and thought. Its 
definition involves time and the consciousness of succession as a syn- 
thesis. But succession in time with regard to objects involves phe- 
nomena in relations of space; this again involves substance and the 
permanent, with reference to which time is constitutive, and an act, 
which would decide the question in favor of construction. Time, 
however, constructs only possibilities, to which there are: (i) realistic 
objections with the argument of evolution; and (2) skeptical objections. 
To (1) Kant would say that evolution is merely a "predicable" of 
time-quantity, and does not apply. To (2) there is appeal to the 
transcendental concept of the possibility of experience. 



INTRODUCTION 7 

Kant at this point seems to realize that as time and number, quantity 
ends in abstraction and does not touch objects. If quantity is to be a 
valid concept a content must be discovered for it, so a distinction must 
be made. Quantity is extensive quantity; and if the possibility of 
experience and hence the transcendental argument is to hold good, it 
must be remembered that the possibility of experience is just what 
makes the synthesis of the homogeneous a quantity. This synthesis 
as abstract quantity is empty conception and the bare possibility. To 
find a content for the synthesis we must appeal to the homogeneous in 
space. Generalized time formulas involve space; but the generalized 
synthesis is the object as the permanent substance, hence space and time 
are both necessary to quantity, that is, space is the schema of time just 
as time succession as number is the schema of quantity. Time as 
a schema applies to objects in only a computative sense, and provides 
for succession only. But the real phenomena demand their coexistence, 
so quantity must be schematized as space also. Quantity schematized 
as both time and space involves the permanent. 

But if space as well as time is involved in construction we are carried 
beyond the idea of quantity as merely extensive. To construct the object 
of experience, quantity must be definitely limited, and as such becomes 
intensive quantity. For knowledge, differences of extensity are im- 
material, and to make a knowledge difference extensity must be qualified. 
As qualified by a line of approach to the real, quantity is characterized by 
differences of degree. Quality has a statement in terms of a priori 
possibilities, for it must be a priori if there is to be formal construction. 
In what sense is quality a priori ? The a priori in the sensuous intuition 
with respect to quality is the mathematical principle that it must have 
a degree. As such it is described as (i) a conceptual mean in a series; 
(2) a moment of consciousness; and (3) a subjective fact. Neither of 
these descriptions is consistently worked out by Kant. 

A reconstruction may begin here upon the basis of results thus far 
reached. The principle of the possibility of experience, if the reference 
is to the concrete actuality of experience, is applicable only to those 
principles which operate only in a regulative way. The distinctions 
drawn so rigidly between sense and understanding and space and time 
must be ignored; and whatever principles were found applicable to 
experience after those distinctions are made, must be regarded merely as 
special applications of the principles which operate within experience 
taken as a whole and with all its connections intact. In this way the 
constitutive principles are analytic only, and serve to exemplify the 



8 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

method of the regulative principles. They do not construct the object, 
but merely represent to consciousness the object as the purpose of the 
complex of the representations in consciousness. While we allow an 
independent function to the constitutive principles, our notion of the 
object is the crudely realistic one, and we have upon our hands the 
ambiguous question of representation. This question disappears as 
meaningless when the constitutive principles are shown to apply only 
to the imaged stage of a purpose, which is completed as an object when 
upon the method of the regulative principles it is connected at all points 
with experience. 

The nature of the regulative principles is then to be understood from 
a proper estimation of these experience connections, and these connec- 
tions can be corrrectly estimated only when approached from the point 
of view of their unity of purpose. It thus simplifies our method when 
we regard all experience connections as instants of causation, while all 
other regulative principles will come out in the account as corollaries 
of this one principle. It is just from this general point of view that the 
first result prohibits application of causality to the sequence in time 
only, for that sequence never reaches the consequent which we call the 
object. Causation regarded as merely temporal shows by its failure 
that some other idea is needed to complete it. This qualifying character 
is found to be the very connectedness of experience itself. Causation 
in experience is thus seen to involve more than time, in fact every general 
characterization of experience is involved in any concrete instance of it. 

How are objects known, is the fundamental question for Kant, and 
his famous formulation of it as, How are synthetic judgments a priori 
possible, arises from a recognition of the fact that all judgments that 
are significant get their significance from a point of reference beyond 
the individual intent from which they start — in other words from 
reference to an object. That significant judgments are "objective" 
is true, however it may be necessary to define the object. The relation 
of thought to its object is the locus of all questions of validity, and 
therefore the proper object of all philosophical investigation. That 
same famous question was less formally and more intelligibly stated 
before the form of the Kritik was worked out, as is shown by the letter to 
Herz, 1 in which its form is, "Wie konnen sich Begriffe a priori auf 
Objecte beziehen?" Questions of the nature and limits of thought are 
unintelligible apart from considerations of the nature of the objects. 

There have been various explanations of the relations which thought 

1 See Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus, Vol. I, p. 329. 



INTRODUCTION Q 

bears to its object — that the object participates in the nature of the idea, 
that the object is represented in the idea, that the object is unreal and a 
miscarriage of the idea, that the relation between the two is unique 
and must be taken without explanation, that the object is the con- 
struction of the idea — the latter having various interpretations. For 
instance, the object is constructed out of a perfectly undifferentiated 
original matter through the process of time; or the object is made by the 
idea out of the original elements of the latter. All of these Kant reduces 
to two general doctrines, 1 namely, representation and construction, and 
he accepts the latter. It requires, however, the whole of the Kritik to 
explain in just what sense he holds to construction. Briefly, the object 
is constructed by the idea out of original forms; but the freedom of 
indifference is not given the active thought principle, since the latter 
has itself a definite constitution within which only it can operate. 
Thought is limited by itself; has its own bounds set for it in its own 
nature. Within these bounds it is free to construct its object, to say 
what it will mean, to determine its own direction. 

Thus there are objects of the understanding and "ideals" of the 
reason; and if the latter are as objects problematical, it is because 
objects are needed when the forms of space and time do not lie in the 
direction in which the need becomes intention. The former are deter- 
mined after the analogy of mathematics by or according to principles 
that are constitutive; the latter on the analogy of experience by or 
according to principles that are regulative. 2 It will be shown below, 
however, that the distinction between constitutive and regulative is not 
so much one of principles as one of objects; and that all principles, in 
that they relate to objects, are both constitutive and regulative. 

A distinction might here be made between principles of thought and 
principles of knowledge. The former get their distinctive character 
as the active agencies at work in the process of thought, or, if the differ- 
ent faculties of mind are not differentiated so sharply, represent only the 
different directions or means by which thought seeks its object. The 
latter have value, after the object is obtained and defined, in comparing 
and organizing the objects of thought in the system of experience as a 
whole. The former are subjective, principles of mind, and are active 
and constitutive in determining objects. 3 The latter are objective, 

1 A., p. 92. See also the letter to Herz, February 21, 1772, Kant's Werke, Kirch- 
mann's ed., Vol. VIII, pp. 402-9. 
a A., p. 179; B., p. 221. 
3 A., pp. 126, 300, 718-19; B., pp. 356, 746-47- 



IO THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

principles of the determined object, and relate to those characters which 
allow the object to be used as a term of the comparative judgment, and 
to be fitted into a tentative whole of knowledge. They are more than 
this, however, in that when the idea of a conditional whole is justified 
through a comparison of objects, these principles may go on from the 
suggestion of the structure of the whole to the determination of the 
direction in which objects may be sought; that is, they find characters 
in the objects organized which suggest the grounds of the possibility 
of objects, find the conditions in general according to which the 
object must conform, and so determine a priori what may, in a given 
direction, be an object of thought at all. 

Thus the conditions of the possibility of experience are laid in the 
constructive capacity of thought in experience, and this idea of the 
possibility of experience becomes the guide to the disposition of objects 
in knowledge or their arrangement in science, as well as to the actual 
character and constitution which the object must have if it is to be an 
object of thought at all. These regulative principles are thus not with- 
out influence upon the object, either as to form or content, since they 
indicate the direction in which construction is possible; and, besides, 
in the opposite direction, or after construction is determined as possible, 
they determine the extent to which it is valid. 

The regulative principles are therefore indirectly or mediately consti- 
tutive. They are, when operative, synthetic a priori judgments in 
which the appropriation of the new is mediated by the idea of the old 
in experience. And they determine content, since they define the con- 
stitution of things in such a way as to be able to say that if there is to 
be a content at all, it must be found in this or that direction and under 
these or those conditions. This is no more than saying that the sense 
experience as the "real" in a possible experience is determined a priori 
as under the bounds of a constitution which is or may be known, and 
that, within these bounds, content is determined upon or selected with 
respect to characters of the known constitution which are then and there 
the object of the speculative purpose. In other words, sense is under 
the law imposed by the understanding, its forms are also concepts of 
the understanding, and its content therefore dependent upon the pur- 
pose of the understanding. And the inclusion of the forms of space 
and time within the system of the concepts is just what is meant by the 
"ideality" of space and time, or the transcendental idealism. This 
point is also the basis of the distinction between constitutive and regula- 
tive principles, and for the idea of a constitutive function of mind. 



INTRODUCTION II 

Constitutive principles are constitutive of objects directly; the 
exercise of the understanding under them gives the object in its reality, 
not merely in answering to their form but in producing their content. 
The forms represented by constitutive principles are grounds or reasons 
for experience, or characters of the constitution of experience — experi- 
ence being assumed as having a definite constitution. These grounds 
are active as " causes," 1 since no object of knowledge can be conceived 
except in its distinction from its ground. 2 And it makes no difference 
here if the "causality of the cause" is freedom, since the event dis- 
tinguished as object could not occur except as it is recognized as necessa- 
rily related to something else. 3 If no object can stand alone in experience, 
that is, if no object is possible except as it has relations which determine 
it an object, these relations show its dependence upon something else as 
necessary (as under the conception of possible experience), and the 
something else must be looked upon as a cause or reason for the object. 4 
The causes are in this case the forms of the understanding, and they are 
the grounds which determine a priori the possibility of there being an 
object. They say that if there is to be an object at all (and the first 
act of consciousness assumes that objects can be) that object must con- 
form to the limits, or be within the bounds, or square with the general 
reasons why there can be an object. This calls attention to the fact that 
the determination of the object carries with it the recognition that there 
are certain conditions upon which the object depends, which conditions 
not only may be but are known, and may be known independently of 
the particular object as the condition of the object in general. The 
main question here is whether these conditions are "merely subjective" 
or really objective, so that our mere intention toward the object may be 
distinguished from the actual construction of the object — whether our 
dreaming can be distinguished from our thinking. For Kant, this 
distinction can be made with absolute confidence: some objects can be 
known completely, both as to form and matter, so there is knowledge 
of absolute certainty. This knowledge is mathematical. 

Regulative principles are constitutive of the possibility of objects, 

1 A., p. 202; B., p. 247. 2 A., p. 125. 

3 A., p. 227; B.,p. 279. 

4 That the idea of construction involves the regulative principles of causation and 
community will be shown later (chap. iv). That is, principles of the quantitative 
and qualitative nature of objects are insufficient to show that objects can through 
their individual content be conceived as under the conditions of possible experience, or 
belong to a world of experience. As under the mathematical principles, when rigidly 
applied, the object becomes a little world in itself, and the plurality of objects the 
aggregate world of monads which "have no windows." 



12 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

which, if actualized, would have as attributes characters corresponding 
to and known from the more general relations of objects in experience. 
These relations are imperfectly conceived because of the limitations of 
the understanding to the a priori forms of objects. If the intuitions 
of objects in experience were identical with the conceptual forms of those 
objects, as is assumed in the mathematical principles, there would be 
no need of regulative principles, since the ideal object would not be 
necessary, being realized in the actual. All principles would be consti- 
tutive if the intuition were given with the concept. But the field wherein 
such occurs is limited to objects of a particular kind; so that if there be 
principles beyond that field, they must be merely regulative, or guides for 
the thought toward a region where, in the absence of intuition, there may 
be objects known by certain necessities due to the characters of objects 
known actually in both intuition and conception. The ideal is of course 
to identify the two kinds of principles by finding that their fields of 
operation coincide in the idea of the unity of the world. This ideal is 
that of the speculative purpose, and the character of its knowledge is 
mathematical, where the intuition loses itself by inclusion in the con- 
ceptual. Subjectively, or on the anthropological side, the ideal would 
include objects of will and feeling, where quality gets its own, 1 and 
where the conceptual is exhibited in intuition. On the side of the 
grounds of such an ideal, the unity would represent the identity of the 
sense with the understanding in an " intuitive understanding" whose 
methods of operation would be principles constitutive completely and 
without limitation, that is, principles not only of objectivity in general, 
but also of the object in the concrete. 

In our own experience, according to Kant, the mathematical is an 
instance of the completely valid knowledge. This knowledge may there- 
fore be taken as the type of all knowledge upon either of two conditions. 
The first of these is that knowledge as such, in so far as valid, is purely a 
matter of quantity, and the quantitative relation an adequate statement 
of its law. The second is that knowledge as such, and as including the 
quantitative, is uniquely qualitative, and capable of formulation in other 
than mathematical terms. Quantity, then, is a narrow abstraction. 2 

1 Later, this question becomes that of the possibility of the identity of extensive 
and intensive quantity. 

2 It will turn out that quantity is a thought term, with reference only to the use 
of the intellect in laying plans; while quality (instead of being merely, as for Kant, 
intensive quantity with reference to the synthesis in space and time) is a knowledge 
term, with reference to thought as objectified, or to objects in their character of fitness 
for becoming centers of reference in experience. Or, briefly, quality refers to the 
significance of objects for knowledge. 



INTRODUCTION 13 

It is the purpose to show that in the development of the mathematical 
ideal, Kant had in mind not the quantitative character of reality, but a 
character that is unique and qualitative, which we may call significance 
for knowledge. Upon this character rest Kant's faith in the ultimate 
rationality or knowability of the world, his postulation of the intelligible 
as beyond and above the sensible, and his doctrine of the primacy of the 
practical reason as the faculty through which objects are known without 
the instrumentality of the sense. 



CHAPTER II 

THE IDEALITY OF TIME AND SPACE AS THE SOURCE OF THE 

DISTINCTION BETWEEN CONSTITUTIVE AND 

REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 

We have seen that the relation of the forms of time and space to the 
concepts of the understanding is the locus of the distinction between the 
constitutive and the regulative principles. It is therefore in connection 
with the Aesthetic that the discussion of that distinction should begin. 
It may seem that since time and space are called perceptions, and there- 
fore regarded as inactive and as having no function but to await a con- 
tent from sensation, there is no suggestion in the Aesthetic of any active 
faculty which might have constitutive force. Yet the mere fact of the 
separation of perception and its "given," from the faculties which are 
operative, is in itself significant while we are engaged in the search for 
the object of knowledge. 

It is clear that sensation of itself does not give an object, 1 neither 
as a single sensation nor as a sum of sensations can it do this. For the 
particulars composing a sum can only be thought analytically and con- 
secutively, and the sum as representing the particulars is only a mark 
which suggests their enumeration. Such a sum gives no clue to the 
qualitative character of the particulars, nor indeed do these characters 
enter into the sum. Qualities are independent of enumeration, they 
cannot be counted, but only the instances or times in which they occur. 
Or, at best only kinds of qualities can be enumerated, that is, abstracted 
from the concrete in the particulars. But these abstractions are no 
objects, since when they are found in experience they are recognized as 
mere instruments. 

This does not mean that there may not be qualitative combinations, 
or syntheses; but only that so long as combination is numerical the 
result is no more than a symbol, or abstract representation of things, 
whereas to produce a new thing there must be qualification of qualities, 
or the fusion of qualities into a whole, which, as a whole, shows characters 
different from those of the elements. Besides the sense elements there 
are others which, instead of adding to the determinations of sense in 
such a way as to make the object at once intelligible, give rise to the 

1 A., p. 772; B., p. 800. 

14 



THE IDEALITY OE TIME AND SPACE 1 5 

very question as to how the representations of sense can enter into the 
idea of the object at all. That is, the question arises out of the relation 
of the mathematical or space-time character of sensation to certain 
other representations of the objects, which have significance for conscious- 
ness, and are distinguishable from the sense characters, but yet are 
indubitable characters of the object. Such a supersensible character is, 
for Kant, objectivity itself. 1 Thus so far as the Aesthetic is concerned, 
no objects have as yet entered into the discussion. 

If by the sum of sensations it is meant that the idea of the object 
is complex, and that there is a number of distinguishable characters in 
it, then there can be agreement ; but agreement on the possibility of dis- 
tinction is itself a suggestion toward a condition more promising of the 
concrete than mere aggregation. But the question is, What is the nature 
and the source of the complexity ? 2 Can the complexity be resolved ? and, 
if so, What does its resolution add to the explanations which we seek ? 
To say that the object is complex is merely to qualify the object yet 
further, that is to add to the complexity, unless in the statement there is 
the key to the solution of the complexity in terms of the sources and 
conditions under which the object exists and is known. In any case, 
the object does not come to us through sense, and it is Kant's recognition 
of this fact that calls for the investigations of the Analytic. So long 
as the forms of space and time are forms of intuition, that is, so long as 
they are the contentless receptacles of individual qualities or groups of 
qualities, furnished through sense, there is no going on toward the 
definition of the object. And while sensibility is regarded as a distinct 
compartment of mind which hands over a finished product, there is not 
only no contribution to the solution of the question of the consciousness 
of objects, but that question is ruled out as not of possible solution, since 
the relation between the two compartments of mind is declared irrational. 

Thus it is not a satisfactory solution of the question of the conscious- 
ness of objects to say that one department of mind furnishes one part, 
another department another. For in this case the question is merely 
restated as that of the unity of mind. To say that the relation of 
representation obtains among different departments of mind does not 
make our theory of knowledge non-representational. It is true that in 
this form the question is somewhat more compactly put, but its discus- 
sion is attended with many difficulties, among which the chief is the 
tendency to subjectivism. But the difficulty which arises in connection 

1 A., p. 290; B., p. 346. 

2 Prolegomena, Mahaffy and Bernard's trans., p. 5. 



1 6 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

with Kant follows upon the interpretation of the notion of time and space 
as forms of the intuition. Interpreted passively as forms of the sensi- 
bility which by the mere accident of their form mould sense content 
into stereotyped shapes and mechanically drop it into the hopper of the 
understanding, the forms of time and space render the question of the 
relation of consciousness to its object inexorably insoluble. But regarded 
not as forms of sensibility alone; but as forms or schemes of the under- 
standing for the sensibility, thus including the sensibility within the 
same circle of purposes as the other faculties, where its relation to the rest 
is explicable in terms of a purpose in common with the rest, the question 
of the unity of mind is not so hopeless. In this sense, however sensuous 
the application of the time and space, they are categories 1 of the under- 
standing, and they are different in character from the other categories 
only in that they have a more highly specialized function. 

Thus the forms cannot hold out as mere forms, as merely "ideal." 
They are real "for experience"; and if experience is meant here to 
include possible experience, little more reality could be asked for them. 
The forms of time and space are realities, and are principles that are 
operative in the determination of objects. 2 In the merest intuition, 
therefore, there are activities tending toward the construction of objects 
since there can be no intuition except as it is "pure " or related to thought. 
At this point of the discussion the aim is merely to show the futility of 
the idea of a mechanical relation between sense and thought. That 
the forms of space and time must be regarded as of the same sort as the 
categories will get consideration later. But enough has been said to 
show that one result of the Copernican discovery is the necessity of the 
assumption that with regard to objects there must be principles whose 
operation is constructive, and that these principles must be operative 
in sense. 

Kant takes the apparent duality 3 of the real and subjects it to a rigid 
examination, and he quite appropriately begins with the objective part 
of the situation. 4 The most general determining characters of the 
object are its geometrical or space-time determinations. The object in 
a common-sense view seems to be constituted of them; but since the 
object, when known, is known within a situation which is also character- 

1 A., pp. 85, 720; B., pp. 118, 748. See also Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticistnus r 
Vol. I, pp. 350 ff.; for space and time as intuitions, p. 346. 
3 A., pp. no, 120, 156, 224; B., pp. 195, 271. 
3 Cf. Watson, Kant and His English Critics, p. 314. 
* Even if it must be admitted that his starting-point is psychological. 



THE IDEALITY OF TIME AND SPACE 1 7 

ized as other than objective, the question occurs, To which part of the 
situation do the space-time determinations belong ? It might be that 
they belong by nature to the knowing or conscious part of the situation. 
Kant assumes the latter and sets about proving the ideality of space 
and time. It is worth while to notice that space and time are "ideal" 
only with regard to the objective character of reality; but since the 
objective part of the situation is irrefragably bound up with the conscious 
part; and since what belongs to the conscious part as having special 
reference to the objective is real, then space and time are real. They 
belong to mind as real, i.e., actual characters of mind; and they belong 
to mind as "ideal," i.e., as thought-of objects. But the ideality or 
reality of space and time is a distinction which has significance only 
when the dual character of reality is under consideration, that is, real 
and ideal are correlative opposites only after abstract dichotomizing 
of the reality situation, and would not appear if that situation were left 
intact or were not thought apart. 1 Thus in another sense they are ideal, 
in that their distinction arises only upon the conscious examination of 
the conditions under and within which consciousness itself "occurs," 
or appears in its opposition to the non-conscious "given." Space and 
time are not, then, real characters of a supposed world independent of 
its being known, but are such as appear in the act of knowing the world. 
They are real characters of the situation which we might call the world- 
being-known, and if we can identify this conception with the common- 
sense reality from which we started, we have them established as real 
characters of both the objective and the subjective. 

Kant has recognized this real character of space and time as a uni- 
versal character of reality in his definition of the object, in which the 
reality of the object is made necessarily conformable to the conditions 
of knowing. 2 This is true even of the thing-in-itself when that specter 
is defined negatively, since it is then that which does not conform to the 
conditions of knowing, and of which we can neither assert existence nor 
non-existence. Now if we call the event of knowing an object an 
experience, and the conditions under which such an event may occur a 
possible experience; and if we agree with Kant that "it is possible 
experience alone that can impart reality to our concepts"; 3 then space 
and time as part of these conditions are real for experience, and as such 
are real for the whole situation. In fact, Kant's proof of the ideality 
of space and time is a proof of their reality for experience, since they are 

1 A., pp. 27, 28; B., pp. 43, 44. 2 A., p. 197; B., p. 242 

a A., p. 489; cf. also pp. 28, 156; B., pp. 517, 44, 195. 



1 8 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

of the conditions under which alone the experience of objects is possible. 
And the proof does not merely leave them real for experience, as if there 
were a wider sphere of reality where they do not have determining 
force; it establishes them in their right as formative factors 1 in the 
activity of consciousness to determine limits for what may and what 
may not be experienced. 

The ideality of time and space has little significance in a scheme in 
which the subject and object are divorced. Nothing is contributed to 
their explanation when they are held as applying to either alone and 
without reference to the other. If they are regarded as forms of the 
mind, "as such," they merely restate the general question of construc- 
tion, since they are emptied of any instruments of approach to the matter 
they are supposed to limit; if they are " objective," that is, characters 
of a reality independent of any relation to mind, the object which they 
determine is by their attribution to it cut off from all communication 
with mind, and what is declared as possibly unknowable is put out of the 
sphere where explanations can be demanded. As characters of either 
side alone, they can only show the subject and object staring blankly at 
each other across a hopeless void. An independent object cannot exist 
in space and time, since such an object is completely undetermined; 
nothing at all can be said of it, not even that it occupies or is in space or 
time, since these are characterizations which belong only to the object as 
known or as knowable; and as such the object is not independent. The 
attribute of independence closes the argument with regard to the object. 

Space and time are determinations which arise and are valid only in 
the situation of an object being known. They cannot belong either 
to the object or to the knowing alone, since alone there is no object and 
no knowing. Nor are they attributes of a mystical relation assumed 
between the object and its being known. Space and time are that rela- 
tion, and they vanish with the disappearance of either term of the rela- 
tion. The "ultimate reality" is the object-being-known, and the being 
known is a determination of the object by space and time. This instance 
of determined existence is an experience, and it is of the whole situation 
that space and time are "real." The ideality of space and time, then, 
since it is proved by isolating the ideal element, is proved real of the 
whole of a real situation when the ideal is shown to be meaningless if 
out of relation to the objective element. The ideality argument is 
thus a device for proving their reality for experience, that is, for the 
"ultimate reality." 

1 Cf. O'Sullivan, Old Criticism and New Pragmatism, p. 12. 



CHAPTER III 

KANT'S CONCEPTION OF QUANTITY AS A CONSTITUTIVE 
PRINCIPLE 

There is no question, for Kant, but that objects as phenomena may 
be given in intuition; the important matter is "how subjective condi- 
tions of thought can have objective validity, that is, become conditions 
of the possibility of the knowledge of objects.'' 1 But when the object 
as given in intuition is regarded in its relations to the understanding, 
there arises the question of the complete sum of the conditions under 
which objects are adequately known, since an estimation of this relation 
is demanded by the idea of possible experience. 2 In so far as the idea 
of construction is concerned this is a quantitative relation, and its con- 
dition is, that all concepts be exhibited or constructed in concreto and yet 
a priori and still on a basis of pure intuition. This relation is found 
as fact in mathematical knowledge. 3 

If the concept of the object as constructed in pure intuition gives us 
an object, and if the pure intuition allows the predicate to be joined with 
the concept before all experience or individual perception, 4 then what 
is the difference between the pure intuition and the concept ? We have 
here, as it seems, not advanced beyond the original assumption that in 
some cases (the mathematical) the concept of the understanding fits 
onto the sensuous experience by some kind of pre-established harmony. 
Kant's clearest statement of construction in intuition is made in the 
Discipline of Pure Reason where he discusses that question: "Philo- 
sophical knowledge is that which reason gains from concepts; mathe- 
matical, that which it gains from the construction of concepts. By 
constructing a concept I mean representing a priori the intuition 
corresponding to it. For the construction of a concept, therefore, a 

non-empirical intuition is required " 5 Here the non-empirical 

intuition, as space and time, has the general validity of an object, since 
it represents the formal conditions according to which an act of thought 
must proceed. But these conditions as relations to an object are 
"nothing but the rendering necessary the connection of representations 

1 A., p. 89; B., p. 120. 4 Ibid., sec. 7. 

2 A., p. 88; B., p. 122. s A., p. 713; B., p. 741. 

3 Prolegomena, sec. 6. 

19 



20 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

in a certain way, and subjecting them to a rule"; they receive their 
objective character "only because a certain order is necessary in the time 
relations of our representations." 1 It is clear that Kant is here making 
the pure intuition approach pretty near the " consciousness and its 
internal form time." It is an act that operates within a condition or 
limit, but it approaches that final act of distinction which discovers 
the object in general as the ground of the distinction between the possible 
and the impossible. 2 

It seems that it is assumed here that concepts meet objects directly, 
the consequences of which assumption Kant seeks to avoid by deciding 
that ultimately the relation of sense to thought is one of degree rather 
than one of kind. 3 But if knowledge is a constructive process and if 
thought works constitutively upon objects in knowing them, that knowl- 
edge must include and organize sense data, and that thought must be 
sensuous in an essential part of its nature. This Kant would always 
admit, since his final appeal is always to possible experience; and that 
possible experience is not a mere concept is shown in the statement that 
"all our knowledge relates, in the end, to possible intuitions, for it is 
by them alone that an object can be given." 4 As it is idle to talk about 
knowledge or consciousness except as the relation to objects is involved, 
so it is irrelevant to speak of thought except as it involves sensuous 
matter. " There is no intuition a priori except space and time, the mere 
forms of phenomena." 5 And while we remember that, for experience, 
the "mere" forms of space and time are as real as anything else, we see 
that for either mathematical or philosophical cognition (which latter 
results in knowledge analytically from concepts), they must be conceived 
in their ordinary experiential sense, and as such they relate to the object 
in its real character in perception, as Kant admits. "The matter of 
phenomena, however, by which things are given us in space and time, 
can be represented in perception only, that is, a posteriori." 6 Now if 
the object is to be constructed, since "only quantities can be con- 
structed," 7 the possibility must be considered whether there can be a 

1 A., p. 197; B., p. 242. 2 A., p. 290; B., 346. 

3 Kant attempts to explain this relation through the use he makes of the concept 
of degree, when he makes degree the schema of quantity and defines it as the quantity 
of intensity in sensation. But since he would not allow of intensity being defined in 
empirical terms, the schema of degree is a purely conceptual matter, and the relation 
concept and sense is still untouched. 

4 A., p. 719; B., p. 747. 6 A., p. 720; B., p. 748. 
s A., p. 720; B., p. 748. » A., p. 714; B., p. 742. 



kant's conception of quantity as a constitutive PRINCIPLE 21 

purely quantitative interpretation of quality and the data of space and 
time. 

If construction is a matter of quantity, then an examination of the 
notion of quantity is required before we can proceed further. There 
must be some interrelation among the categories, either as a point of 
development or of mutual purposiveness with respect to the content to 
which they are supposed to apply. This interrelation is regarded by 
Kant as effected through the relation which each of the categories bears 
to time, 1 and as a mutual relationship through time it would seem a 
matter of development. This development, however, does not refer to 
the concepts as themselves forms, since a development of mere forms in 
time as contentless change can have no significance; but rather to the 
development of the degree of adequacy in the consciousness of the object, 
as that consciousness advances from the homogeneous in perception to 
generality and Regelmaessigkeit in the object. 

For Kant there seems to be a pure form of quantity as such, 2 yet 
"with regard to quantity (quantitas) there are no axioms in the proper 
sense of the word." 3 That is, there can be no synthetic general propo- 
sitions with regard to quantity as such, but only with regard to quantities 
(quanta). It is clear, however, that the concept of quantity is being 
regarded as in its relation to time, where its schema is given as number. 
As number, quantity relates to the internal sense, or to the form of the 
consciousness in general, and is quite a different thing from quantity 
considered in its relation to space. Construction in quantity with refer- 
ence to space is a symbolical representation in the imagination of 
geometrical spaces, and as symbolical, may be given "ostensive" repre- 
sentation by its reduction to geometrical notation. It seems possible 
that construction of quantitas may be made symbolically, and through 
the symbols used, upon their interpretation, transition may be made 
to construction of quanta, where axioms may be formed with complete 
certainty. This symbolism is algebraic. "In mathematics however, 
we construct not only quantities (quanta) as in geometry, but also mere 
quantity (quantitas) as in algebra, where the quality of the object, which 
has to be thought according to this quantitative concept, is entirely 
ignored." 4 

The question is here, however, whether this symbolic construction 
and ostensive construction are not the same thing. That is, apart 
from the two notations, and considered as conscious procedure where 

1 A., p. 145; B., p. 184. 3 A., p. 163; B., p. 204. 

3 A., p. 717; B., p. 745. « A., p. 717; B., p. 745. 



22 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

objects are involved, are not the geometrical and the algebraic methods 
the same ? It is not easy to see the difference of conscious procedure 
in these two cases, although in the one case, as dealing with quanta, 
and thus having direct relations to objects in coexistence or succession 
in time, there is construction of the actual spatial objects of geometry; 
whereas in the other case, as dealing with quantitas, there is no object 
involved at all, since quantity as such, as having no relation to time, has 
no connection with those forms which provide the possibility of objects. 

Thus it appears that the attempt to establish the notion of quantitas 
is itself sufficient to show that that notion has no significance out of 
relation to the other concepts; and when thought in relation to the 
other concepts, that of quantitas becomes quanta. It thus involves 
time and space, and, as will appear later, involves also quality with all its 
"moments." Quantity as a pure concept does not contribute much 
toward the explanation of the consciousness of objects. At least the 
"deduction" is not generally given credit for having accomplished its 
purpose of showing how the pure forms, as subjective conditions of the 
possibility of experience, can lead to the object in the concrete. And 
the "object in general" must have a stretched interpretation in which 
its generality vanishes before it can conform to the "objective" 1 condi- 
tions of the object in the concrete. 

Kant's shift from quantitas to quanta is accomplished by the abandon- 
ment of the pure concept for its schema, so that when the concept is 
regarded as having direct reference to the real it appears as number. 2 
Here is involved the notion of quantity as the synthesis of the homo- 
geneous manifold, which presupposes, first, the subjective act of syn- 
thesis 3 in the successive addition of one to one; and second, the 
determination of real units as are given in sensation. 4 Within the 
conception of number there is involved the understanding with its pure 
thought product as act, and the sense representation as matter to be 
determined. "Number therefore is nothing but the unity of the syn- 
thesis of the manifold (repetition) of a homogeneous intuition in general, 
I myself producing the time in the apprehension of the intuition." 5 

Number must then be considered in its relations to time and space. 
In its relation to time as the internal sense, it is the act of comprehending 
the manifold of intuition under the law of their succession. It is not 
the image, in this sense, of a collection of objects, but rather represents 

1 A., p. 286; B., p. 342. * A., p. 168; B., p. 209. 

2 A., p. 140; B., p. 179. s A., p. 143; B., p. 182. 

3 A., p. 129. 



kant's conception of quantity as a constitutive principle 23 

the act by which a plurality of objects is regarded as a collection. "If, 
on the contrary, I think of a number in general, whether it be five or a 
hundred, this thinking is rather the representation of a method of 
representing in one image a certain quantity (for instance a thousand) 
according to a certain concept, than the image itself, which, in the case 
of a thousand, I could hardly take in and compare with the concept." 1 
Succession belongs to the phenomena in time, but not to the law accord- 
ing to which these phenomena succeed one another. In the latter sense 
phenomena are regarded as to their relations in space, in which the order 
of succession may be reversed, and the phenomena considered as coexist- 
ent. But with regard to time itself as the law of the order among 
phenomena, it is the permanent. "Only through the permanent does 
existence in different parts of a series of time assume a quantity which we 
call duration. For in mere succession (succession as the rule and as 
abstracted from phenomena) existence always comes and goes, and 
never assumes the slightest quantity." 2 The time form here regarded 
as the internal sense, and as operative in numbering, is an aspect of 
the understanding, in that it serves as a faculty of rules to set limits 
among what may assume quantity. But for this active capacity there 
would never be a distinction of the homogeneous, since if there could be 
a consciousness at all it would be one entirely without change, and such a 
"consciousness" is empirically determined to be unconsciousness. So 
there can be no homogeneous without a homogeneous manifold, and no 
manifold without the act of synthesis determining limits within the 
homogeneous. 

As an act of synthesis it is difficult to distinguish number from the 
time form itself. As the "condition of the possibility of all synthetical 
unity of perceptions," 3 time is regarded as that which is a priori in the 
sensuous experience. And if we identify time as an a priori intuition 
and as a condition of experience, with the understanding as a lawgiver 
to nature, 4 we have as it seems a condition of the identification of the 
unities of apprehension and of apperception, and thus the possibility 
established for the construction of objects in time and space, the 
objects which constitute the corporeal world. This would also establish 
all principles in their right as constitutive principles, and decide the 
epistemological question in favor of construction. 

There is, however, little comfort in mere possibilities. The possi- 
bility of the construction of nature might exist in the mind as a general 

1 A., p. 140; B., p. 179. 3 a., p. 183; B., p. 226. 

3 A., p. 183; B., p. 226. 4 a., p. 125. 



24 



THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 



rule according to which that construction must proceed if there is to be 
construction at all; still the question is not answered as to whether 
there is to be such construction. We may have to heed the realistic 
assertion that nature is " there" prior to any of our acts of construction, 
and as a condition through evolution of the existence of that possibility. 
But evolution as a law of development in time is a "predicable," or a 
derived concept arising out of the consideration of quantity in its rela- 
tion to time. Evolution as a principle by no means provides for the 
reality of our mental constructions, but as a corollary to time it repre- 
sents a particular direction in which our syntheses in time may move 
in distinguishing the law of succession from the act which prescribes the 
law to things in succession. Actual things in nature are not involved, 
hence evolution as a principle remains a category whose "schema" is 
yet to be discovered. There is, however, a means of securing reality 
for the constructions of our internal sense under the category of quantity, 
and this consists in the relation of quantity, as involving the internal 
time sense, to the space form. 1 But before leaving time quantity we have 
to consider it as extensive. 

It simplifies matters much if we state at the beginning that by 
quantity Kant means extensive quantity. His statements about 
extensive quantity therefore give us our idea of what he means by 
quantity. His formal definition, however, is hardly characteristic of 
his general attitude to the matter. "I call an extensive quantity that 
in which the representation of the whole is rendered possible by the 
representation of its parts, and therefore necessarily preceded by it." 2 
That is, every synthesis of the homogeneous in intuition, considered as 
represented to the time consciousness, is an extensive quantity; but it 
is not clear that the character of extensiveness distinguishes that syn- 
thesis from any other, if every phenomenon as object is known only in a 
synthesis. And the possibility of an object is just what makes a syn- 
thesis of the homogeneous a quantity. There would be no consciousness 
at all, since there would be no object, in a homogeneous given as com- 
pletely undifferentiated or unlimited, because there would be here no 
evidence of the presence of the activity of the understanding; but if 
there were not present a distinguishing act, the homogeneous would 
appear, if at all, as the mere "given" to receptivity, which does not 
constitute a consciousness. This kind of given would have no quantity; 
there would be no object and hence no consciousness. Quantity appears 
here as the condition of the object, and as such condition, is also a con- 



A., p. 165; B., p. 206. 



A., p. 162; B., p. 203. 



KANT S CONCEPTION OF QUANTITY AS A CONSTITUTIVE PRINCIPLE 25 

dition of consciousness itself. 1 But phenomena as extensive quantities, 
considered as syntheses in the internal time-intuition, can be known only 
in the bare possibility, that is, only as a limitation of the time synthesis 
itself. It is nothing more than the successive pulse and pause of count- 
ing where the homogeneous unities are quite unqualified or unlimited, 
so there is no reality for this synthesis. Evolution is valid as a principle 
here, if we are considering it in its philosophical aspects, but not in its 
objective or scientific application. When employed in the latter way, 
evolution as a philosophical principle is forgotten entirely, that is, as a 
method of pure synthesis in time, it cannot be used as an organizing 
principle. The application of the principle in science involves the modi- 
fication of the time synthesis by the application to it of the space- 
intuition. But of the pure time quantity, since it is itself no object of 
perception, "I can only think it in the successive progress from one 
moment to another, thus producing in the end, by all portions of time and 
their addition, a definite quantity of time." 2 But a definite quantity of 
time, or simply time under the conception of quantity, is duration; and 
duration as measured time, since time cannot be perceived, can be known 
to the consciousness only through appeal to outer space perception. 

Definite quantity of itself cannot thus in any of its aspects give 
axioms, since as defined, its application is restricted to particulars; 
and while propositions resulting from it are self-evident and synthetical, 
they are not general as is required of axioms. They can be therefore only 
numerical formulas. In these "the synthesis can take place in one 
way only, although afterward the use of these numbers becomes gen- 
eral." 3 The synthesis of two numbers, as affected in the one way only, 
results in the synthetical proposition. But when the characters are 
used as symbols merely, when their use becomes general, the proposition 
formed is either analytical or a contentless memory symbol for an 
established habit. But as a time synthesis the proposition is singular 
only. The construction in imagination is defined with reference to 
quantity, but the construction itself determines a particular quantity, 

1 B., p. 203: "Now the consciousness of the manifold and homogeneous in intui- 
tion, so far as by it the representation of an object is first rendered possible, is the 
concept of quantity (quantum). Therefore even the perception as a phenomenon is 
possible only through the same synthetical unity of the manifold of the given sensuous 
intuition, by which the unity of the composition of the manifold and homogeneous 
is conceived in the concept of quantity; that is, phenomena are always quantities, and 
extensive quantities; because as intuitions in space and time, they must be represented 
through the time synthesis through which space and time in general are determined." 

2 A., p. 163; B., p. 203. 3 A., p. 164; B., p. 205. 



26 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

hence the statement of that construction cannot be an axiom. If it 
could be generalized in construction also, and not merely in use, the 
proposition would be an axiom with universal application, whereas as 
particular, it is only a numerical formula. As generalized in construc- 
tion a quantity represents the "mere function of productive imagina- 
tion," 1 and its statement defines the conditions 2 under which an object 
is possible in more than one way in that it involves space as well as time. 

Generalizing quantitative statements involves more than the time- 
quantity consciousness. The mere function of productive imagination, 
if it is a valid consciousness at all, must square with the empirical con- 
sciousness in other matters than time, if it becomes possible to make 
pure mathematics in their full precision applicable to objects of experi- 
ence. The successive progress from moment to moment has a condition, 
which, as already remarked, is to be found in the relation of quantity 
to space. It is true that if the object can be defined as a rule of synthesis 
of the understanding, and that synthesis could be identified with the 
time-quantity consciousness, then mathematical propositions, even 
numerical formulas, would be in their full precision applicable to objects 
of experience, and any statement of quantity would be an a priori 
synthetic judgment. But it must be remembered that the object is 
decidedly too complex a representation to allow of such procedure. 
The object involves not only time-quantity, but also space-quantity; 
and it is the latter which renders the former possible to representation. 
That is, space is the schema of time, just as time succession as number 
is the schema of quantity. 

By referring to space and time as schemata I mean to insist on their 
conceptual character. It has been shown that the concept of quantity 
taken in the abstract acquires significance only when regarded, as Kant 
insists, as a synthesis of the homogeneous. But the very idea of a 
synthesis, as also that of homogeneous unities, implies number as the 
form in which the synthesis occurs. And number, again, involves time 
as the form under which a plurality of unities is synthesized in the inner 
sense. But a synthesis in time in itself gives no guarantee of the reality 
of the process, since it affords no generality for judgments expressing 
that synthesis, which are merely numerical formulas. It thus permits 
the conceptual representation of phenomena in their succession only. 
But since the sensuous representation of phenomena provides for their 
synthesis in coexistence, and as parts external to each other, the cate- 
gory of quantity must be further schematized through the representation 

1 A., p. 164; B., p. 205. 3 A., p. 142; B., p. 182. 



27 

of space. And this is what was meant when it was said that space is 
the schema of the time-schematized category of quantity. Thus, after 
all Kant's insistence that the schema is not the image, it seems that the 
image of objects in space is necessary to the application of the category 
of quantity. 

That a spatial representation is necessary to the pure time deter- 
mination is evidenced in many of Kant's statements. "And exactly 
because this internal intuition supplies no shape, we try to make good 
this deficiency by means of analogies, and represent to ourselves the 
succession of time by a line progressing to infinity, in which the manifold 
constitutes a series of one dimension only; and we conclude from the 
properties of this line to all the properties of time, with one exception, 
i.e., the parts of the former are simultaneous, those of the latter succes- 
sive." 1 But since succession is the essential property of time, such a 
representation in a synthesis whose parts are simultaneous does not 
make an analogy likely to be helpful. The analogy still leaves the 
distinctive character of space and time incommensurable, unless these 
characters can find a common ground in a deeper unity. This deeper 
unity is found in the permanent; for, "without something permanent 
therefore no relation of time is possible." 2 This assures to existence a 
quantity because of which it does not "come and go." But existence 
which does not come and go and which therefore has a quantity, has a 
character which makes it determinable (in thought at least) independent 
of time, and which forms the ground of time itself (as succession). This 
character is the synthesis of the object in space. "Though both are 
phenomena, yet the phenomena of the external sense have something 
permanent, which suggests a substratum of varying determinations, and 
consequently a synthetical concept, namely, space; while time, the only 
form of our internal intuition, has nothing permanent, and makes us to 
know the change of determinations only, but not for the determinable 
object." 3 Thus in so far as time quantity is concerned our constructions 
are of our own internal consciousness, and might very well go on inde- 
pendent of any reference beyond that consciousness. Such a con- 
struction, however, would be entirely without basis, since a remembered 
point in the process could not occur as an element in a new construction, 
because such a reference backward would give the memory product a 
place. That is, elements would be conceived as coexistent and simul- 
taneous, and simultaneity is meaningless except as objects are conceived 

"A., p. 33; B.,p. 50. 3 a., p. 381. 

3 A., p. 183; B., p. 226. 



28 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

as external to each other. That is, two pulses of time which are felt as 
two, though conceived as simultaneous, are equivalent to two objects 
occupyingMifferent places; and when the pulsation is labelled two, that 
is, when there is a distinction, there is the appearance of " transcendental 
reflection" which assigns a "place" in time. 

The sum of all these considerations is that when mere enumeration 
is further distinguished, the consciousness involved is more than that 
of time-quantity; or, when there is a limitation imposed on the time 
process, this limitation becomes a rule of synthesis and implies an object 
in space. Hence the conception of the permanent in time implies space; 
and even though this permanent may be defined in subjective terms as 
the rule of the synthesis of the homogeneous, it is as such even the limi- 
tation to the time flow, and what limits the time flow cannot be itself 
unless it is to be identified with the whole of consciousness as will. 
What limits time must be what is itself not mere time, but the result 
of a characterization within consciousness other than mere succession. 
"For the purpose of presenting to the conception of substance something 
permanent in intuition corresponding thereto, and thus of demonstrating 
the objective reality of this conception, we require an intuition (of matter) 
in space, because space alone is permanent, and determines things as 
such, while time, and with it all that is in the internal sense, is in a state 
of continual flow." 1 

That a spatial determination is necessary to the representation of 
time quantity is shown in the many instances in which Kant constructs 
the line in imagination. "We cannot represent time, which is not an 
object of external intuition, in any other way than under the image 
of a line, which we draw in thought, a mode of representation without 
which we could not cognize the unity of its dimension, and also we are 
necessitated to take our determinations of periods of time, or of points 
of time, for all our internal perceptions from the changes which we 
perceive in outward things. It follows that we must arrange the deter- 
minations of the internal sense, as phenomena in time, exactly in the 
same manner as we arrange those of the external senses in space." 2 And 
that this mode of representation is necessary, in Kant's view, for the 
idea of quantity in all of its aspects is seen from this statement: "It 
can easily be shown that the possibility of things as quantities, and, 
therefore, the objective reality of the category of quantity, can be 
represented only in the external intuition, and only through its medium 
be applied to the inner sense also." 3 

X B., p. 391. 2 B., p. 156. 3B., p. 293. 



CHAPTER IV 

INTENSIVE QUANTITY AS A CONSTITUTIVE PRINCIPLE 

In so far as quantity is regarded as the abstract synthesis of the 
homogeneous manifold, it may be said that there is a consciousness which 
can be regarded as quantity as such. In this case it is the idea of a 
unity within an undifferentiated mass of representations which may be 
either of the internal or of the external sense. No character of the 
representations is involved in the unity except the formal one of their 
fitness to be conceived as elements of the same consciousness. But 
this formal character is a "pure" construction, since it represents only 
the mode of activity in which the representations are received together. 
There can be no question that there is construction here, since nothing 
else is intended by the act which receives representations; but the 
question which must arise is, Just where does the object get determina- 
tion ? If the object is defined as the rule of the synthesis, there is no 
difficulty in understanding its construction by the mind; and, further 
the object has universal validity for the human mind, since the object 
is nothing else than that constitution which makes a mind a mind. 

So long as quantity is the object of our constructions the question 
of the relations of the forms of sense to the forms of the understanding 
stands open, and our epistemology is representational. The object 
cannot be formed out of material defined by limitation from the object. 
Nor can any synthesis of abstractions represent the object of experience, 
much less construct it. Quantity must itself have a quantity or be a 
quantum; that is, it must be definitely limited, and this limitation, for 
experience, gives it a quality. Quantities are, for the understanding, 
homogeneous, and the character of the knowledge involved is not 
affected by the difference of the quanta considered ; that is, the knowledge 
value of quanta by its incorporation in the body of knowledge extends 
that body in one direction only. But this body of knowledge thus 
extended is not more inclusive of the real in experience than before its 
extension. 

So far we have considered quantity as extensive merely, and this is 
the meaning employed by Kant when he defines quantity as the syn- 
thesis of the homogeneous. It is a formal principle, and pertains only 
to such determinations of the object of experience as may be considered 

29 



30 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

external. As such it fulfils the requirements of a constitutive principle 
when constitution is subject to the limits imposed by the idea of possible 
experience. But the formulation of a priori possibilities, while it may 
construct the object of experience in one more or less unimportant 
aspect, still leaves that object unrecognizable as a concrete event in 
the experience of ordinary life. The concept which represents the law 
of the construction of objects of experience must include more than the 
mechanical aggregation of the characters most remote from what is con- 
crete in experience; and to do so, must consider not only the abstractly 
homogeneous manifold as extensive quantity, but must ask what it is 
in the manifold that makes a manifold of the homogeneous, or that 
transforms the homogeneous from a congealed and dead substratum into 
a living manifold of interacting individuals. If quantity is to be made 
the principle whereby objects of experience are to be constructed, it 
must become limited quantity, or quantity having some definite con- 
nection with the real in experience. This connection is made, for Kant ; 
through the only character of the real that is known a priori, 1 viz., 
intensive quantity or degree. We here are dealing with a conception 
much more promising than that of extensive quantity, since in speaking 
of degree Kant has reference to the significance of the real in experience, 
and not merely to the subjective mode of the mind as receptive. And 
while this second of the mathematical principles is defined abstractly, 
as if to confine it to the subjective realm where only possibilities are to 
be considered, yet the principle gets a concrete significance in the applica- 
tion that is made of it. 

Extensive quantity is called a constitutive principle because through 
it the mind marks out a priori certain characters of the real, if, in the 
particular direction in which the mind is working at a given time, there 
is to be any real. It thus sets the limits under which an experience of 
the real is possible. But these limits may be determined, and corre- 
sponding characters of the real may be suggested, without there ever 
being an instance of reality present. 2 

In the same way intensive quantity, or the degree of the real in 
experience, has an a priori formulation in terms of the possibility of 
experience, and this formulation may be conceived as a law in advance 
of the experience of the reality to which the law applies, and in which it 
as a law is discovered. That is, degree may occupy consciousness as a 
law even while there is no reality present which has a degree. As such, 
it is the "principle which anticipates all perceptions as such." 3 It is 

1 A., p. 176; B., p. 218. 2 A., p. 199; B., p. 244. 3 A., p. 166. 



INTENSIVE QUANTITY AS A CONSTITUTIVE PRINCIPLE 3 1 

here to be asked in what sense the real as the matter of sensation can 
be represented in the mind independent of and in advance of its par- 
ticular occurrences. The question is not asked from the point of view 
of genetic psychology. Nor is it, for Kant, asking whether a sensation 
can be felt when there is no sensation; but it is rather, in his mind, a 
consideration of whether sensation has any characters, conceptual or 
other, which may have a knowledge significance in the absence of the 
feeling through which the sensation is known. If there be such char- 
acters, then it can be said that if there is to be sensation, or whenever 
there is sensation, it will conform to certain conditions as laws. If there 
are these laws and they can be discovered, then sensation as a conscious- 
ness can be regarded, in so far at least, as of the same nature as the con- 
ceptual elements of mind. Kant insists that there is to be found an a 
priori character of sensation. 1 This character which is known a priori 
in sensation is expressed in the mathematical principle that the real in 
sensation has a degree. 

It is no part of the present purpose to show the various relations 
which the concept of quality has to the other categories in the system 
of Kant. That all the categories are bound together through their 
common schema time, has already been shown (chap. iii). Nor is it 
the purpose to show that the three conceptions, reality, negation, 
limitation, are necessary to the understanding of the reality which is 
present in sensation. In fact, the consideration of these forms is likely 
to lead to a conceptualization of sensation, and to neglect of the concrete 
real events in which sensation is experienced. Apart from this abstract 
scheme we may attempt to find from Kant's statements what he means 
by the intensive quality of reality, or its degree as experienced in sensa- 
tion. Such a statement is found in the Anticipations of Perception 
(1st ed.). In this statement sensation involves "a continuous con- 
nection between reality in phenomena and negation"; and "fills no 
more than one moment"; and in a later statement, 2 " phenomena 
as objects of perception, contain the real of sensation, as a representa- 
tion merely subjective, which gives us merely the consciousness that 

the subject is affected " In this description of quality as 

schematized by degree there are three points to which I shall give 
attention. First, there is the notion of degree as a conceptual mean 
in the series limited by zero and infinity. Second, there is the notion 
of the consciousness of a degree of reality as represented in a single 
moment. And third, the notion of degree as represented in sensation 
'A., p. 167; B., p. 209. 2 B., p. 207. 



32 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

considered as a subjective fact. I take up these points in the order 
named. 

Degree has reference to the consciousness of reality as occupying a 
mean position between zero and the absolute reality as the other limit 
to the series. If we put it in spatial terms the zero position is empty 
space and the opposite limit is the absolutely filled space. But the 
former can never be known, since the absence of reality in an intuition is 
the absence of the means by which that intuition becomes a conscious- 
ness. And since to become known there must be a degree greater than 
zero, it follows a that no perception, and therefore no experience, is 
possible, that could prove, directly or indirectly, by any roundabout 
syllogisms, a complete absence of all reality in a phenomenon." 1 It is 
clear also that there is no consciousness of the absolute reality, except 
as an ideal of feeling, or as a pure construction of the intellect which 
can never become objectified as knowledge. Since knowledge disappears 
at either limit of the series, and since in this case nothing but abstractions 
remain, we are as far as possible from the real of actual felt sensation 
where intensive quantity is supposed to apply. As a relation between 
terms of a series of possible sensations, degree, as representing the rule 
of synthesis of the homogeneous, has a significance which can be esti- 
mated. Degree in this sense represents a unity. 2 

If degree must be regarded as a rule of synthesis there is difficulty 
in understanding how we can claim objective validity for our judgments 
of the intensity of phenomena. Defining the object as a rule of syn- 
thesis gives us no doubt the object as phenomenon, or as the result of 
our construction upon the basis of perception, but this does not show 
how the object may be given us in perception, which it is the business 
of intensive quantity to do. The rule of synthesis is not found in the 
phenomena but in the result of our conceptual activity upon sense data. 
And it is just the purpose in the appeal to degree to show that our a 
priori rule is identical with a character of phenomena as they stand in 
series. It is here that the subjective consciousness is represented as 
standing to the phenomena "in nature" as cause to effect, when we 
must look at the intensities of phenomena as present in space and time as 
being the result of a "synthesis of the production of the quantity of a 
sensation from its commencement — that is, from the pure intuition = o 
onwards, up to a certain quantity of sensation." 3 It is the rule of syn- 
thesis as active which gives our acquaintance with phenomena, and as 

1 A., p. 172; B., p. 214. 3 B., p. 208. 

2 A., p. 168; B., p. 210. 



INTENSIVE QUANTITY AS A CONSTITUTIVE PRINCIPLE 33 

we can look upon that rule as quantitative (intensively and without 
regard to the aggregate in space and time), our experience of phenomena 
may through their difference in degree be subjected to the mathematical 
statement. 1 In fact it is the conception of an intensity of a phenomenon 
which renders a phenomenon possible to consciousness as a synthesis 
in coalition; while it is a break in the synthesis, or a "repetition of a 
synthesis (beginning and) ending at every moment" which gives us 
the consciousness of an aggregate of many phenomena. 2 Thus intensive 
quantity gives us a "much," while extensive quantity gives a "many." 

Intensive quantity as a rule of synthesis within phenomena regarded 
as arranged serially, involves causation, which, as we shall see in the 
following chapter, is not a mathematical, and therefore not a consti- 
tutive principle. In neither case is the immediate real of sensation 
represented in consciousness directly, but only through a conceptualized 
symbolism, which is clearly representational. 

As a "moment," sensation is not a synthesis of parts and is without 
extensive quantity. It is not quite clear in what sense the "moment" 
is to be taken, since, if it is to be used in the sense of a temporal limit, 
then the consciousness of degree cannot be a synthesis; and if taken not 
in a temporal sense but as a synthesis, then degree becomes extensive 
quantity. I pass for the present the rigid either-or which represents 
intensive quantity and extensive quantity as entirely unrelated. I con- 
sider here the moment of sensation in its relation to both. 

The moment of sensation would seem to be the consciousness of a 
term of a series out of relation to other terms, a cross-section, as it were, 
of a series at a given point. Besides the objection that such a view 
is impossible because terms vanish when taken apart from their relations, 
there is the further one that no synthesis (and for Kant therefore no 
consciousness) is possible, since the point of cross-section is a limit, 
which can never be compounded into time. 3 The moment could not 
therefore be a continuous quantity, since it could have no relation to 
time. 

The moment as extensive quantity would represent a synthesis in 
space and time, and as such is open to all the objections which have been 
raised to extensive quantity, the most conclusive of which is that quantity 
as extensive, although it determines the object as external, does so with 
such a vengeance that the object is not directly related to consciousness, 
and that relation can only be representational. It is therefore clear that 

1 A., p. 178; B., p. 221. ^ a., p. 170; B., p. 211. 

2 A., p. 170; B., p. 2ii. 



34 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND KEGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

in sensation intensive quantity cannot be separated from extensive 
quantity, without losing, in the one case, all matter of sensation and with 
it all reality; and in the other, without losing the formal or space-and- 
time character of sense, and with it the conscious determination of the 
object. If the matter of sense is neglected, and the synthesis directed 
to the forms of space and time, we have the object as mere extensive 
quantity. If the synthesis is directed to the matter of sense to the 
neglect of the form, then the object is the immediate of intensive 
quantity. In this case the question of the relation of consciousness 
to its object could not arise. But the fact that it does arise is suf- 
ficient evidence that intensive quantity and extensive quantity cannot 
be separated. 

It is hardly worth while here to discuss sensation as a subjective 
fact, since a merely subjective fact offers little help in the search for an 
object which is not a purely formal one. Still, the purely subjective 
elements lead, for Kant, to the determination of the object in that they 
point to its synthesis by conforming to a rule. . But given a number of 
intensities in which a rule is at work and there is a synthesis in time 
and space. This would not, therefore, correspond to the moment of 
sensation, but would be an extensive quantity. 

Thus the notion of intensive quantity as subjective fact is found to 
be meaningless except as it involves the synthesis in time and space 
and therefore extensive quantity. Intensive quantity and extensive 
quantity, or quality and quantity, cannot be separated in the investiga- 
tion which is to result in the description of that consciousness which 
accomplishes the determination of the object. Quality, as schematized 
by degree and represented as the law operative between infinite limits, 
implies causation. Quality with no limits imposed upon it cannot thus 
be a constitutive principle; in this case the principle constitutes too much. 
As the moment of sensation, quality constructs a non-quantitative 
world, or a world of unlimited manifoldness. It is the world of the 
many, where there is no hint of law or rule. It thus shows the necessity 
of the conception of a community of the real and of the interrelatedness 
of all experience. As subjective, quality neglects that aspect of 
experience which suggests to us the necessity of the quantitative or 
mathematical formulation of experience which constitutes our world of 
science as such. 



CHAPTER V 
THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 

It has appeared that the concept of quantity as a synthesis of the 
homogeneous manifold has no objective significance except as it involves 
substance as the permanent real. And this substance has been shown 
to require an interpretation in terms of the real in perceptual space. 
As such it is the ground of causality, and carries us at once out of the 
sphere of constitutive principles, if constitutive principles must be 
mathematical, into the sphere where principles are "merely" regulative. 
In the same way, intensive quantity, or quality, in that it gives us only 
the conception of a multitude among which different grades or degrees 
of the real may be distinguished, suggests the question of the principle 
upon which the object may be constructed within the qualitatively 
differentiated manifold. This principle, when found, must show its 
applicability through its capacity to combine these different degrees, if 
degree is to become intelligible. For, degree implies difference; there 
could be no meaning for the notion of degree as applied to a homo- 
geneous. Hence, before there can be degrees there must be a relation 
established among the homogeneous, which recognizes or establishes 
differences. A degree is quantity of difference. Now this principle, if 
we are to appeal always to the possibility of experience, is that upon 
which we depend when we assert that a particular experience is possible, 
namely, causation. When we take the concept of the possibility of 
experience in its ordinary experiential sense, that is, as applying merely 
to the matter in hand, as, e.g., a particular problem in science, we say 
that a given experience is possible because observed relations demand 
that that experience be realized when the given conditions are fulfilled. 
It is possibility which is predictable upon analogical construction and 
is a possibility only in the sense that the given conditions are not yet 
fulfilled. When the conditions are fulfilled, the possibility has passed, 
and its place is taken by "fact." 

But the possibility of experience may be expressed in terms of the 
sum of the conditions without reference to the result which is to follow 
upon their fulfilment. In this case the conditions represent factual 
events of the present, and we say that we see the principle involved in 
the present situation. Or the conditions may be conceived merely, so 

35 



36 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

that we can say that whenever such and such conditions are present, 
then such or such an event will follow. We are here thinking of results 
in terms of causation, and are uniting a cause with its effect. But we 
may regard a set of conceived conditions in the point of the relations 
which determine their capacity to issue in a given event. Here we have 
universalized a situation and we express its causal capacity in a state- 
ment which we call a principle. 

A serious mistake is easily made here, however, and it can be shown, 
I think, that Kant falls into error on this point. When we have the 
conceived complex of conditions expressed in the form of a principle, we 
say that our principle brings about or produces a given result. It is as 
if we said that first here is our principle as an active agent ready to spring 
forth at our call and present us with a brand new event, so that after 
the event has taken place we can count two existences, whereas before 
there was but one. But, instead, what we really have is a set of condi- 
tions which, upon our change of purpose or point of view, is an event 
which we consider a result. What is produced is our new purpose, and 
there has been no addition to "nature," no new "event" has occurred. 
Nature has no results; an event in nature follows another event, and if 
it does so uniformly with respect to our interests or purposes, we desig- 
nate it a result, but then only in relation to the preceding event. The 
only change in the situation is that what we formerly knew as a complex 
of conditions, we have synthesized into a unified principle expressing 
our purpose, and now know the same as an event we call a result. 

A sequence implies an extended time or a lapse of time; so that 
events described under that notion are conceived as disparate, as having 
individual "places" in time. Under the notion of sequence we are 
thinking of the progress of the lapse or the passing of a given duration, 
and its extensity is its only character for us. But when I speak of uni- 
formity of sequence, I have turned from the consideration of a quality 
of time itself to that of the nature which objects must have in order to 
become terms in a sequence, that is, to the qualities of objects which 
make them sequents. So the uniformity of sequence is independent 
of time, is rather a character of objects, and is singular or unitary and 
not numerically quantitative. There is no "production," since there 
is no objective justification for duality of cause and effect or activity 
and result. There is only a situation conceived as a whole, a " concept, " 
which, as generalized, is a principle. 

Kant's mistake here is in abandoning the "causality of the cause" 
as uniformity of sequence for the ancient superstition of the efficient 



THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 37 

cause. But what we are concerned in here is to point out that uni- 
formity of sequence when properly understood is the unitary ground 
which, for Kant, connects causality through substance with quantity, 
or that gives a causal significance to the synthesis of the homogeneous 
when considered in extensity. Thus substance is a conceived ground 
for causality, and its idea would never arise if the necessity of causality 
were never questioned. It means nothing more than the unity or 
uniformity of the causal relation. 

Causality is, then, the basic principle in the doctrine of quantity. 
While quantity as such, or extensive quantity, is under consideration, the 
consciousness involved is that of the synthesis in time. The operation 
of the synthesis is therefore serial and linear, or of only one dimen- 
sion. It is in this case that a purely temporal or arithmetical mathe- 
matics applies with its synthetic numerical formulas. But in this 
synthesis we are only computing or calculating experience. Our progress 
is rapid and satisfactory so long as we are dealing with constants in 
direction, so long as our serial advance does not turn upon itself or is 
not opposed by series of different directions. But experience is a field 
and not a line. 1 To carry out the figure, let two quantitative experien- 
tial series intersect. At their point of intersection there is an event 
which has a place in both series, and its numerically computed place 
is or may be different in each. At the same time this event has two 
determinations, or two events occupy the same time or, one event 
occupies two simultaneous "times." Now we have seen that simul- 
taneity or coexistence in time is equivalent to coexistence in space; 
or that the complete consciousness of two objects in one time involves 
the spatial determination of those objects. When the object or the 
real is determined in the time series, the quantitative direction of the 
synthesis is no longer significant, since it must share its determining 
capacity with a complex of directions. Quantity is only one of the 
determinants of objects. In other words, an event determined as other 
than a point of time becomes a nucleus of a myriad of relations. And 
since direction, or the temporal flow, does not comprise the whole 
significance, the purport of an event may be considered as extending 

1 Kant's Dissertation, sec. 14, note: "Though time is of one dimension, yet the 
ubiquity of time (if I may use an expression of Newton's) , by which all things sensible 
are somewhere, adds to the quantity of real things another dimension, in so far as they, 
as it were, hang upon one moment of time. For if you picture time as a line in infini- 
tum, and coexistents by lines applied at right angles in any point of time, the super- 
ficies which is thus generated will represent the Mundus Phaenomenon both in its 
substance and its accidents" (Caird's trans.). 



38 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

to this or that other term. That is, the "productive " influence of events 
in experience is mutual, they mutually produce and support each other, 
their relations are reciprocal. 

It is evident, then, that the second of the constitutive principles, 
which has been discussed as intensive quantity, appeals to causality 
and its ground in the permanent substance 1 through the category of 
community. We have therefore to leave the idea of the construction 
of objects in experience, in so far as that construction is of possibilities 
only, and turn from the constitutive principles to the regulative principles 
of causality and reciprocity, which are shown to be involved in the idea 
of construction. After Kant's notions of causality and of reciprocity 
have been examined, it can be shown, I think, that the distinction 
between constitutive and regulative principles is merely formal, and 
that any principle that is really operative in experience proceeds in both 
a constitutive and a regulative way. 

In taking up the examination of causality, I do not undertake to 
show its formal relation, through its " deduction, " to the other concepts. 
That it has a relation to the temporal "inner" experience as schematized 
by Kant as quantity, and to "objectified" or outer experience as repre- 
sented by quality (which, however, has more knowledge significance 
than is expressed in intensive quantity), has already been shown. It 
will be sufficient for our purposes to take up the idea of causality as the 
rule of synthesis. 

It is evident that the succession of our subjective representations 
does not necessarily correspond to the succession of the manifold of an 
object. If they did so correspond, consciousness would pronounce 
immediately upon the object, or the object would be merely the con- 
sciousness of the subjective succession. But "the phenomenon, in 
contradistinction to the representations of our apprehension, can only 
be represented as the object different from them, if it is subject to a rule 
distinguishing it from every other apprehension, and necessitating a 
certain kind of conjunction of the manifold. That which in the phe- 
nomenon contains the condition of this necessary rule of apprehension is 
the object.'' 12 Thus the succession of representations is under some sort 
of necessity, otherwise the play of fancy would operate upon nature as 
a free cause. But it is just as our fancy is free that we determine some 

1 A., p. 187; B., p. 230: "Hence a place has been assigned to this category (sub- 
stance) under the title of relation, not so much because it contains itself a relation, as 
because it contains their condition." 

3 A., p. 191; B., p. 236. 



THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 39 

subjective successions as having no objective reference. It is the case 
where there is no constraint upon the internal succession which sets the 
problem of objectivity. For, "our thought of the reference of knowl- 
edge to its object carries with it something of necessity; for the object 
is regarded as that which hinders the elements of our knowledge of it 
from coming upon us pell mell and at haphazard, and causes them to be 
determined a priori in certain ways. For, just in so far as our ideas 
are to refer to an object, they must necessarily agree with each other in 
reference to it, i.e., they must have that unity which constitutes the 
conception of an object. " x Agreement among our ideas however, does 
not account for constraint upon the way in which they agree, or does 
not show the object as different in any way from the complex of ideas, 
unless we are to be satisfied in saying that the object is nothing more 
than the abstract representation of the relations among ideas. But 
such a realistic demand would call for a determination of the object as 
external to experience, in which case the fundamental question of the 
reference of thought to objects could not arise. In some sense the 
relations among ideas must give us the object. While we do distinguish 
the subjective succession from something which we call the object, yet 
this distinction must be accounted for through a rule which identifies 
the elements distinguished. Thus, "we take that which lies in our 
successive apprehension to be mere ideas, while we regard the phenomenon 
which is given to us through them as the object of these ideas, with which 
the conception we draw from the ideas of apprehension is required to 
agree : though in truth the object in question is nothing but those very 
ideas as a complex unity. " 2 

That we have objects in our experience is due to the fact that we 
apprehend a succession of representations as a unity. But this succes- 
sion involves breadth, as we shall see later. Our consciousness of any 
term in the succession is not complete in itself; rather, the consciousness 
of a single element is impossible if we are to have experience. Thus a 
given term would not be a sequent except as it is conceived as following 
upon another, since its place in time could not be established except in 
relation to another of its kind. A term cannot be "placed" with refer- 
ence to time itself, since the latter cannot be perceived. Nor can the 
term be related to empty time, for this would involve its creation, and the 
creative cause is not allowed under the idea of causation as uniformity 
of sequence in time. 3 The unity of a complex of ideas means, then, 

1 A., p. 104. 3 a., p. 206; B., p. 251. 

3 A., p. 291; B., p. 236. 



40 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

simply that ideas are ideas only in complexes, for otherwise there is no 
possibility of experience. Now, for Kant, there can be no sequence of 
unrelated terms. This would be a consciousness of pure quantity under 
the sole condition of time, and as schematized as number, would be 
merely the computation of empty times as in counting. But times have 
to be filled before their enumeration has any consequence for knowl- 
edge, as was shown by the fact that Kant had to appeal to the real in 
space in order to make the quantity consciousness constitutive. The 
counting of empty times is mere fancy, a figment of the brain ; an attempt 
to grind with the conscious mill when there is nothing in the hopper. 
Some sort of connection is needed. 

But does the necessity of a relation make the relation, when found, 
one of necessity ? If we have to answer this question affirmatively, the 
conception of causation as uniformity of sequence in time will have to be 
modified. The necessity of a relation between the b of the present 
moment and the a of the immediately previous, cannot be understood 
in terms of the times in which they occur, nor in terms of the inner con- 
sciousness whose form is time, but can be understood only when the 
objective character is added to the consciousness in terms of coexistence. 
The a and the b, when there is question of the reality concerned, are 
simultaneous, that is, they are capable of a relation which does not 
involve any quantity of time at all. So far as the objective aspect of 
the situation is concerned, the whole situation occupies a point of time, 
which cannot be compounded into time. The ab situation stands in 
a line at right angles to the direction of the time flow, and the time flow 
is significant only in that it leads to the " place" of that situation. It 
is, then, their simultaneity in time and their coexistence in space which 
provides the objective character for terms of a sequence. And this is 
what was meant when it was said above that quantity appeals through 
substance to causation, when there is question of the constitution of the 
object of knowledge. Thus, "it is impossible for anyone by mere think- 
ing, without an example, to comprehend how, out of a given state of a 
thing, an opposite state of the same thing should follow; nay, he cannot 
attach any meaning to such an idea without a perception. And the 
perception required is that of the motion of a point in space, the exist- 
ence of which in different places (as a consequence of opposite determina- 
tions) alone makes it possible for us to realize change to ourselves. For, 
in order subsequently to make even inner change intelligible to our- 
selves, we need to figure time, as the form of inner sense, by a line, and 
the inner change by the drawing of this line (motion) : thus using exter- 



THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 4 1 

nal perception as a means to the understanding of our own successive 
existence in different states. And the reason of this is, that all change 
presupposes in the perception of it something permanent ere it can be 
perceived as change, but that in inner sense no permanent perception 
can be found." 1 

This reference of the objective to space is not to be taken in a real- 
istic sense. For change in space (motion), as a knowledge element, is 
determined, for Kant, in exactly the same way as the inner or temporal 
succession within the object. The significance of the spatial reference 
here is that, for the determination of the concrete object in experience, 
the whole sum of the conditions under which an experience is possible 
is required to be employed. That sum of conditions as involved thus 
far includes space, time, and causation, with the ground of the latter in 
the permanent. These we have examined, but it yet remains to be shown 
how causation must be further modified in order that it may operate as 
a condition of experience when the latter is regarded in its full import. 

What has been established thus far, for Kant, is that if there are to 
be objects in experience, there must be relations of necessity 2 among 
those objects, and that these by their nature exercise a constraint upon 
the way in which representations are united in consciousness. This 
way of representation is a rule of synthesis, and our consciousness of 
this rule is our guarantee that our thought embodies the real and that 
we are not dreaming. 

While causality is regarded in its temporal relations only, it must 
lead to such a view as regards experience in a linear way, or as if it were 
of only one dimension. 3 This empties time of any objective character 
and leaves our conscious constructions "subjective" in the sense that 
there is no " place" where those constructions should issue, and thus 
renders the process inconsequential. It represents just such a con- 
ception as the continuity of time, when time is regarded as "an infinite 
given whole." It is the homogeneous which is not yet a manifold; 
that is, there are no "places" with individuality sufficient to give rise 
to the concept of a relation, and so long as there are no differences where 
relations may obtain, the idea of a cause cannot arise. Here it might 

1 B., p. 292. 

2 Whether this necessity is one of fact or one of act does not matter here. Hume 
is answered in any case. 

3 This point is made by O'Sullivan, Old Criticism atid New Pragmatism, p. 232, 
where Kant's view is called a "streak" view of causality. I point out, however, that 
the deficiency of causality is made good by regarding reciprocity as merely a part of 
that conception. 



42 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

be said that time is ideal in the sense that it is a ground of conceived 
differences, and it would have significance in that by it the homogeneity 
is broken up into perceptual atoms, thus providing a reason for the 
question of the structure of experience. But such abstractions must 
be left behind if we are to give to causality any experiential signification. 
More than time, whether ideal or real, must be involved before there is 
approach to the concrete object, and we may attempt to point out some 
relations which are non- temporal but which are yet instrumental through 
causality in determining the object. These relations may be found as 
characters involved in causality itself. And as causality is regarded 
as a regulative principle, that is, as operative within experience rather 
than upon experience, it will be necessary to find the characters of caus- 
ality as attributes of experience itself. 

If we follow Kant in "drawing a line" to represent our conscious 
values, we may carry further our figure of the "field" or the "sphere" 
of experience. It may be true that the ultimate limit to which we can 
carry analysis is the pure time sequence which we conceive of as of only 
one dimension. But our limit is in this case ultra-experiential and there- 
fore an abstraction. It may be an element of the instrumental devices 
of our thinking, but the very question of the nature of knowledge shows 
that it is not necessarily on that account an element of experience before 
the latter is emasculated by abstraction. The one-dimensional element 
is of significance only in establishing a locus, but even to do this there 
is required either previously established loci or a pluralizing of the line. 
If there are loci already established, our element is no longer elemental, 
since its character is determined by those of the elements with reference 
to which it was determined, and if the line is pluralized, there are rela- 
tions involved which are not merely linear or temporal. The case where 
b follows a is not so simple as it seems, and so far as our concern is with 
the consciousness of the object, we can say that our consciousness is of 
either a or b alone. This, of course, assumes that a and b are not the 
simple elements that our symbolism takes them to be. As centers in 
experience, they have individually all the quantitative and qualitative 
characters that belong to the events between which causation is sup- 
posed to apply. That is, within each of them, as a whole in experience, 
causation is already operative; and this is true even in Kant's sense, 
as is shown when each of them is supposed to represent an event in 
possible experience. They are possible experiences, otherwise we should 
not be concerned with them; and, as such, causation is already assumed. 
The question of how or why b follows a is then to be answered through 



THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 43 

an appreciation of the characters which belong to each. And in their 
examination a and b turn out to be complex events, and the "necessity" 
of the fact that they cannot be separated cannot be established as merely 
the accident that b follows a temporally. 1 That b does follow a in time 
may be due to the "necessity" that as knowledge- values the one is 
incomplete without the other. Besides, there are relations which all 
agree are causal and in which the temporal relation applies only figura- 
tively, or in a sense that denies the essential character of time, namely, 
its succession, or rather the succession in time. Such a relation is that 
of water to its containing vessel, or that of the ball which rests on a soft 
cushion. And this relation, as causal, is not explained by saying that 
cause and effect are contemporaneous, or that the cause continues after 
the effect has begun, if cause is a matter of temporal sequence. Sequence 
in such a case ceases to be temporal or progressive, and takes its signifi- 
cance (if it have any) from the conceived material or substantial ground 
involved in a physical law. And here we have left the temporal sequence 
aside, and are appealing to the conditions of its "ostensive" represen- 
tation in a relation of space. The causal notion as time sequence has 
in this case quite slipped our mind, and we find ourselves attempting 
merely to furnish for that sequence an expression in spatial coexistence. 
The "necessity" of the causal relation is in this case merely the fact 
that substance or matter as the coexistent in space is necessary to give 
ah objective character to our inner representation of time. Thus in 
appealing to the temporal sequence we show that our interest is not 
merely to describe relations of causation as experience shows them to us 
but that we are looking for a ground or a reason for causation which 
might be found by pulling experience apart. Ultimately, we are justi- 
fied in seeking a ground of causation; but this ground, when found, 
shows only the necessity of causality as a relation, or that causation as 
a law is necessary to consecutive thinking; it shows that a law of neces- 
sity is necessary to thought; but it does not show in what the necessity 
of the relation as an internal character consists, that is, does not express 
in experiential or objective terms the connections which are due to 
causation. The elements which constitute the necessity of causation 
are the familiar characters of objects in experience conceived as "corn- 
possible," or as the unity of a complex whole. 

The law of causation is a law of thought. It means that if there is 

1 The causal relation as time sequence is, perhaps, properly taken care of by the 
psychological law of Association, if psychology "has only to do with the natural history 
of subjective processes as they occur in time." — Stout, Manual of Psychology, p. 6. 



44 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

to be experience at all there must be a consecutiveness in the occurrence 
in thought of those elements which are to make that thinking possible of 
objectification in experience. This consecutiveness is neither temporal 
nor quantitative, if our criticism of the time-consciousness has not 
failed. As temporal or quantitative, it fails of objectification; for, as 
such, nature is neither sequential nor consequential. Nature is; experi- 
ence has a definite constitution; what it may be in itself or for itself 
does not concern us. But the object of that thought in which causation 
holds as a tie necessary under the conception of the possibility of experi- 
ence is of concern to us, and we may by simple description find the 
characters of that object which constitutes the necessity of causation. 
Thus, even though causation must be regarded as a conceptual necessity, 
the elements which constitute that necessity are the familiar characters 
of objects in experience. And although the necessity is conceptual, 
its objectification is "factual." 

While b follows a only in a temporal sense, and as independent of 
other terms than those of the series to which a and b belong, nothing 
further can be said. And the fact that no connection can be made 
between this series and other serial complexes is sufficient evidence 
that the temporal- series is not what we ordinarily mean by causation. 
There can be no necessity in what is not possible of connection, even 
if the connection be only ideal, with other experiences of its kind. And 
for knowledge purposes, connections of causation are all of the same 
kind. Indeed, necessity could mean nothing, if there were cases where 
it were not necessary. This leads us to the conception of the object, 
if it is the object of knowledge we are seeking, as the center of an infinite 
number of relations. The infinite is not used here in the absolutist 
sense, but in the sense of an attribute of the possibility of experience. 
The object is that which will connect harmoniously with the complex 
of my interests and purposes from any point I may wish to approach it. 
And the number of ways of approach to the object is limited by the 
possibility of experience only. If I approach the object from the direc- 
tion of the purpose of my thought, where I mean it as that which will 
satisfy my instinct to know, the object is an object of my thought. If 
I approach it as that which will convert my intention into action, it is 
an object of my will. But in any case it is a center of all the various 
relations involved in the process of my defining my purpose to myself, 
and thus represents that which holds my experience together when an 
advance is attempted on a basis of that experience. If my experience 
is to remain intact, at this point there must be an object. Hence, b and 



THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 45 

b only, follows a here, because, if it did not, a with the whole complex 
of temporal series which intersect in this point to make it a, and which 
we call an experience, would fall asunder and become unreal. But the 
unreality of a would involve the denial of our thought purpose as the 
summation of our whole experience; hence b must follow a not only 
because our purpose demands an object, but also because our experience 
vanishes if this sequence is not realized. In a sense it is the possibility 
of experience which gives the law to the experience that is actual. So 
the necessity of causality is the expression of our instinct toward the 
self-preservation of our thinking. 

The necessity of causality seems thus to demand a general statement 
as a law of the constitution of experience, and we are inevitably led to 
that general law from the realization of the full import of any particular 
case of sequence. It must be borne in mind, however, that the "deduc- 
tion" of necessity must proceed from the inquiry into the nature of the 
object which is possible in experience, and not from the analysis of the 
abstract concept of that possibility. The full appreciation of the con- 
crete object-content involves the notion of the possibility of experience 
as well as that of necessary cause. This object, as we have seen, is the 
center of an indefinite number of relations ; a is not merely a, but a, a\ a", 
. . . . b. But each of the terms is a center of an indefinite number of 
such series, thus giving breadth to the objective situation. An instance 
of causality is not a case in which a particular event follows another 
particular event; there are no particular events; except we say that 
the particular is representative of the whole complex of experience, 
and then we incur all the dangers involved in symbolism. An instance 
of causality must be conceived as nature = b following nature — a. The 
abstract a must be replaced in the concrete nucleus of relations from 
which abstraction withdrew it. And the particulars of time sequence 
are merely the symbols in which we represent the whole of nature as it 
appears to us in our unreflective moments. The sequence of cause and 
effect cannot, as we have seen, be represented satisfactorily in the serial 
expression of time lapse, and what has been said about the time con- 
sciousness involving the space consciousness was said with the purpose to 
show the pure time lapse an abstraction, and therefore not a valid con- 
ception under the possibility of experience. The same considerations 
which compelled the attempt at the synthesis of the time form with the 
space form in order that we might have a concept for objectivity, now 
compel us to add to the space-time category the idea of causality. 
But the space- time-causality category, when employed in the operation 



46 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

of the synthesis of experience, requires also the notion of substance as 
an objective ground, and when considered with respect to the possibility 
of experience, this ground is generalized in the notion of reciprocity. 

In taking up the notion of reciprocity little more need be said than 
was said in showing how the notion is involved in that of causality. It 
can be "deduced from the idea" of causality when the latter concept is 
shown from the examination of the concrete object to be necessary to 
the concept of an object at all. The principle of community is better 
stated in the second edition of the Kritik. In the first there seems to 
be an attempt to state the principle in such a way as not to involve 
causality. As such, it might be a "fact" about a realistic world which 
stands statically in space alone. But it is probable that the period be- 
tween the appearance of the first and of the second editions was repre- 
sented in Kant's mind by an attempt to connect more closely some of 
the things he had put asunder. 1 At any rate, the statement of the second 
edition shows the influence of the progressiveness of the time idea 
together with that of the coexistential character of the space idea. 

Starting, as Kant always does, with the inner experience, there is 
the fact of the time sequence. What purport to be objects are passing 
in endless line and in the same direction. This is, however, a subjective 
dream, and he is aroused from it by the possibility of the reversal of the 
direction of the progress, since, as temporal, that progress gives us only 
one thing in one time to doomsday. As temporal only, our conscious- 
ness would be as a mirror before which the spokes of a revolving wheel 
would appear one after the other eternally. But the rude fact that 
things do appear in other than the one-at-a-time way is evidence that 
things are determined in other ways than that of the time sense form. 
"Hence," as Kant puts it in the Proof of the Third Analogy (2d ed.), 
"we require a concept of understanding of the reciprocal sequence of 
determinations of things existing at the same time, but outside each 
other, in order to be able to say, that the reciprocal sequence of the 
perceptions is founded in the object, and thus to represent their co- 
existence as objective. The relation of substances, however, of which 
the first has determinations the ground of which is contained in the other, 
is the relation of influence, and if, conversely also, the first contains the 
ground of determinations in the latter, the relation is that of community 
or reciprocity. Hence the coexistence of substances in space cannot 

1 Kant's reference of the time consciousness to the space consciousness for exempli- 
fication is dated by Caird within the period between the appearance of the two editions 
of the Kritik. See Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. I, p. 500. 



THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 47 

be known in experience otherwise than under the supposition of recipro- 
cal action: and this is therefore the condition also of the possibility of 
things themselves as objects of experience" 1 

Under the idea of reciprocal action, we have to think of experience 
as the limit within which all our purposes tend, and in which these 
various purposes are mutually determined in their common purpose to 
construct the object. The object is then the "whole of experience" 
in the sense that it is the sole product of experience, and that it repre- 
sents the dynamical tie which holds experience together in such a way 
that we are able to proceed upon it as a basis for the production of new 
objects. Objects are thus wholes of dynamical relations, and their 
wholeness is their reference to possible experience. Thus there is no 
need for the "infinite given whole" of sense; in fact, possible experience 
does not permit such a concept. Wholes are wholes with reference to 
the possibility of experience only. Experience is itself, as the final 
assumption, the only "infinite given whole." 

But an object is such for me and a significant fact for my experience, 
and is determined so by my experience, because it as such stands or 
acts as related to what are for me other objects. Now the criterion for 
its objectivity is to be found in the fact that it is related to other objects, 
that is, in the fact that in my purposes to determine other objects it 
appears as a guide to those objects. It is not that I think this object, 
but the fact that by it I think other objects; it is a means whereby my 
present communicates with what is to be my present, to put it in tem- 
poral terms. My present thus takes its place in the " society " of objects. 
If the present occupies me to the full extent or reach of the relations 
which make up possible experience for me, then I say that I know the 
object as an end, since my purpose to know is fully satisfied. But this 
is probably emotional realization, where the distinction of objects no 
longer obtains, and where our theory of knowledge has no business to 
intrude. 

But the moments of my private thinking comprise only a very small 
portion of experience. The moments are rare when we "sit down to 
reflect," as Berkeley says. Consequently the greater portion of the 
objective world is not determined for us in the "metaphysical" society. 
The point is here, however, that the possibility of my thinking not in a 
merely temporal or sequential way, but in a way that involves objects 
and is therefore consequential, depends upon the fact that the fabric of 
experience is continuous through the characters that are common to 

J B., p. 257. 



48 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

objects. In other words the possibility of experience is a social concept. 1 
But the fact that characters are common to objects does not imply that 
objects or relations are necessarily all of a kind; characters as binding 
relations are not necessarily similarities. Difference is a tie that binds; 
and let the difference be as great as may be, the fact that I assert it as 
existing or subsisting between objects makes these objects of a piece 
with the rest of experience. The question is here not of the kind or 
degree of relationship, but rather of the necessity or the fact of relation- 
ship. And, as we have seen, the necessity of a relationship makes a 
relationship of necessity. And the possibility of experience provides 
the necessity for a relationship throughout the extent of experience. 
Necessity is then an object, since it is matter of fact. 

The object of thought as such has been developed, and although 
the discussion of it seems abstract and general enough, that develop- 
ment was undertaken merely to show that our reflective thinking is 
objective, or constitutes objects after the pattern of possible experience. 
The situations developed are theoretical and the objects concerned are 
of a definite kind. But the same development may be followed from 
the opposite direction and the objects involved shown to be of the same 
kind. That is, the objects reached through a consideration of our 
theoretical purposes are the same as those reached through the consider- 
ation of our practical purposes, and the way is perhaps the more direct 
in the latter case. 

Appealing once more to the possibility of experience, it must, it 
seems, be said that the theoretical construction of objects in experience 
is dependent genetically upon the practical construction or assumption 
of objects. Unreflective activity, such as we saw in the case of the time 
quantity consciousness, proceeds without defining objects explicitly, 
and the possibility of their being theoretically defined lines in the sugges- 
tions which reflection gathers from that procedure. These suggestions 
consist of the organized methods of action and characteristic modes of 
reaction which are imbedded in the individual and the social life. As 
such they are "material" conditions of the possibility of experience. 
What the present means to me when I have not sat down to reflect is 
what is contained in my previous life (either as an individual or as a 
representative of humanity at large) in the shape of what such moments 
have meant. That is, its meaning is the form I can give it when I 
interpret it in terms of remembered similar moments together with the 
moments which have succeeded the latter as their issue. What will be 

1 That is, a concept of reciprocity; "social" in a metaphysical sense. 



THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES 49 

possible for me in this moment is denned in axiomatic fashion in terms 
of what has been actual for me in other moments, and this actuality 
points the way for me in so far as the present moment is not unique or 
strange. 

Reflection as the conscious determination of objects is called for 
when the relations between what appears and what is known is merely 
suggested or pointed to by what has become axiomatic in experience. 
We thus are able often to "see" a relation before we are able to state it, 
or to communicate it as a new addition to our present stock. The 
principles of our familiar possessions are regulative here, and we are 
able to state that at this point there must be an object, although it as 
yet exists only in the form of its general conditions. Its place in time 
has merely been determined. But established methods of procedure 
so converge upon this point that all that is required to "fill" the point 
is carefully to follow the directions indicated by our principles. Thus 
we discover the necessity of a relation which turns out to be a relation 
of necessity; and defining the point as the intersection of our principles 
is defining it an object of knowledge, and filling it with reality. The 
necessity of the object is causation when we have connected it with its 
kind "in nature," and when we have forgotten the ideal elements of 
purpose which discovered it. 

It is, however, true that not all points indicated by our established 
methods of procedure are realized or established in their necessity. The 
object is not always forthcoming. And for this there are various reasons. 
It may be merely that we do not follow out sufficiently far the suggestions 
given. In this case there remains an open problem; yet we can assert 
with some confidence that the real is to be discovered when the problem 
becomes insistent enough to absorb our efforts to the fullest. The 
object is a problematical one, yet it may be used if we will remember 
that it hangs under the shadow of doubt. Or, its doubtfulness may be 
turned to account in the search for its necessity, in which the doubt 
vanishes at the successful issue of the search. 

Again, the object may not be located because of doubt which hangs 
over some of the principles which indicate its place. Not all that is 
organized within our experience is understood so well that we may 
depend upon it absolutely. It may be that nothing is so well "known. " 
Such objects are the hypothetical ones which we say we have some reason 
to believe are related by necessity to our experience, but which have not 
been established in that necessity. Necessity here is an idealized con- 
tingency, the "as if " of morality and religion. Such are also the ideals 



50 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

of the reason. They are doubly questionable, in that their place as 
assigned by reflection is assigned only in general terms; and also in that 
the principles upon which the assignment is made are themselves of 
problematical character. 

Such hypothetical objects are merely based upon experience, and 
the basic reference is so remote that the principles used in their case as 
well as the objects themselves are only conjectural. They require to 
be mentioned only by way of illustrating the method by which and the 
extent to which the regulative use of the principles may be carried in a 
speculative way. They show the tendency to abstraction which results 
when it is attempted to express the fulness of the concrete. They go 
beyond experience in the search of the necessity which is to provide an 
organic character for it, and the result is the hypostastis of a factual 
necessity into one of hypothetically absolute character. This external 
necessity is clearly self-contradictory. The necessity in experience is 
nothing more nor less than the conceived body of relations which are to 
be found organizing experience at any moment. 

Thus are the regulative principles constructive of objects in experi- 
ence, and their construction extends further than to possible objects. 
Kant 's separation of the two kinds of principles was perhaps due to his 
failure to grasp the full significance of his own concept of the possibility 
of experience. Neither constitutive nor regulative principles are con- 
structive of experience, but both are constructive of the object in expe- 
rience. Experience is the "infinite given whole," and construction has 
reference not to its extent nor its content, but to the intent of that of 
which we are at a given moment conscious. 



CHAPTER VI 

CONCLUSION 

I shall attempt briefly to bring together the various lines of the 
argument developed by Kant upon the question of the consciousness 
of objects, in so far as that consciousness is determined by the constitu- 
tive and the regulative principles, and shall then follow this resume with 
a statement of what I think are the natural and necessary implications 
of his argument. 

The first result of reflection is the fact that knowledge is of objects. 
Are the objects, in any case and in any sense, the results of reflection, 
or do they merely appear in reflection? And if they result as con- 
structions from thought either as reflective or as unreflective, in what 
sense is reflection to be taken ? Taking up the matter of construction, 
Kant seems to find that objects are constructed finally and without 
doubt or question, but that these objects represent only a com- 
paratively small part of what we ordinarily regard as objects. 
Objects which are constructed are mathematical, or are objects of 
quantity. But when constructed, it is evident that these objects 
are not such as occur or appear in experience when our purpose 
is not definitely to construct them as objects. And objects which 
are not directly our purpose do appear. It is evident, then, that the 
possibility of the definition of the object depends in some way upon 
the structure of experience and the conditions of connection and perma- 
nence in it. Whatever the object is, it is of the same sort as the setting 
within which the notion of the object arises. Under this new concep- 
tion of it, the question of the relation of thought to its object appears to 
Kant and is stated by him as that of the possibility of experience. 

The object, however, cannot be constructed in time alone as is 
undertaken in the discussion of quantity, but the empty and inert time 
elements have to be filled with the experientially substantial, and this 
element comes from the spatial character of experience. Space and 
time thus united give the dependableness of objects in experience, or 
as we usually call it, the necessity of causation. When this unitary 
view of space-time-causation is reached, the question of construction 
disappears, since its meaninglessness has been demonstrated. Out of 

51 



52 THE CONSTITUTIVE AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES IN KANT 

this causal conception, when we are thinking of the volume of experience, 
there grows a conception of the manifoldness of experience which is not 
hopelessly dissipating, but which serves on the contrary to justify our 
unifold conception. The realization of the object as a point from which 
issue directions of purpose whose number is limited only by possible 
experience, gives us the notion of the object as the core of an individu- 
ality, and through this, the conception of experience as an organism 
whose law is social. Here the logic of practice meets its end in the full 
definition of the particularly real as of a piece with the whole of our 
ideals. 

And herein lies the significance of Kant's guiding idea of possible 
experience. When taken as the sum of all the directions which my 
purpose may pursue in its progress from my present as a hypothetical 
object, it supplies me with a "rule according to which I may look in 
experience for a fourth term, or a characteristic mark by which I may 
find it." 1 The object is not given as a construction in the form of ab- 
stract conditions. It appears as a proof or justification of connections 
which have been found necessary to be made in order that a purpose 
may be worked out. No addition is made to experience by introducing 
an externally new element, hence construction is not of experience, but 
within it. Nor can the act of construction be regarded as a new fact 
of "reality" since it is presupposed already in the concept of possible 
experience. There can be no experience at all if there are not activities 
resulting in the amplification of objects, so this activity is included in 
the fundamental assumption. It is therefore through the "character- 
istic marks" of objects already determined in experience that our 
principles find a condition of their use. Hence their use is regulative 
with respect to the object to be determined, since they operate accord- 
ing to rules contained in the characteristics of objects already known, 
and constitutive with reference to the objects from whose characters 
the rules are obtained, since these objects are re-formed upon the basis 
of their reciprocal relations. The distinction of constitutive and regula- 
tive principles therefore breaks down, since the two kinds of principle 
represent only different directions of the same process. They are the 
same process with respect to the objects involved, for so far as the prin- 
ciples are concerned, objects are all of a kind. They are permanent 
points or loci established in order to determine the direction of a purpose; 
and their objectivity consists in their significance for knowledge. And it 
makes no difference whether knowledge is regarded as the goal of thought 

1 A., p. 180; B., p. 222. 



conclusion 53 

in a speculative sense, or as the basis of rules of action; the objects are 
the same in any case. 

It has been shown that the distinction between the constitutive and 
the regulative principles is one of a series of sunderings which extends 
throughout Kant's system. The distinction of sense from understand- 
ing gives two worlds, the distinction within sense between time and 
space cuts off the subjective processes from the substantially permanent, 
thus leaving the subjective at loose ends with the universe; the distinc- 
tion of constitutive and regulative principles introduces the void within 
the society of objects, defining the one part as abstractions, and the 
other as atomistic particulars. If on the contrary we begin with the 
principles, recognizing that there is no difference of their objects, we 
have the conditions of the conception of an unbroken world; and with 
this conception we have the thought process incorporated within the 
whole, since there is no distinction of "inner" and "outer." 



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